OS X is a very smart operating system and you don’t really realize that unless you start paying attention to the minor details and minute functionalities it has at the system level. One of the intelligent functions you might have observed if you use the stock Mail app is that it detects date and time. It creates a connection between the Mail and the Calendar app and allows you to record an event on the said date directly from the Mail app. This same functionality exists in the Messages app; should you find yourself talking to friends and family deciding dinner, a co-worker discussion a meeting time, or just someone reminding you to take your dog to the vet, if the date and time of the “event’ is mentioned in the conversation, you can create a Calendar event from it within Messages.

Whenever, during a conversation over Messages, someone enters a date or time or refers to a future date in someway, it is detected. A dropdown arrow appears next to it when you move your mouse over it. The time or date does not have to be referred to in absolute terms; if you write next Saturday at 6pm, it will still be detected, time and all.

When you see a date and time that you would like to save as an event, click the dropdown and a popup will open allowing you to edit the event, and then add it to the Calendar app. The Calendar app does not have to be running in the background for you to be able to send an event to it.

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This feature isn’t new, i.e., it existed in OS X before Mountain Lion, though it seems to not have been updated to work with the Reminders app that was introduced in Mountain Lion. Events will sync to your iPhone over the Calendar app so perhaps there isn’t much functionality lost but, some dates and times in conversations are not meant to be created as events. They would do better to be recorded as reminders. Perhaps there is a way to tweak or, there might even be an app for it.

The feature doesn’t just pick dates and times, but will also use part of the conversation to create an event name making it much easier to add an event. The sheer simplicity of adding an event like this leaves you wanting the same functionality for the Reminders app. Perhaps there is a Terminal command that could do the trick since it is a matter of communicating with a different app.